Ghost of Myself
by Rin0rourke
Summary: The Ultimate Enemy, a tale of what would happen should our ghostly hero turn evil, but one must wonder, what happened to Dash?


Warning, this fanfiction contains mild violence and implied slash between Daniel Fenton and Dash Baxter from the cartoon series Danny Phantom. So enjoy.

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Dash sat quietly in his room, shoulders against the wall, legs drawn up and hugged to him by his own arms, as though he could find solace in his own empty embrace. His normally well groomed hair fell around his face like a golden waterfall, though it looked more like tarnished bronze in the dark, cold, empty room filled with so much sorrow.

What little one could see of his face was drawn and filled with anguish. He moved not an inch, even the rise and fall of his torso as he breathed was hidden behind his enfolded limbs, one would think he was a weeping statue, a work of tragic art rendered from a block of marble, but he was alive; a real, breathing, mourning creature. It would be a mercy to have been a statue, forever frozen in the form of heartache but never feeling the emotions shown upon his countenance. But no, he was cursed to be tender flesh and wounded heart. He was human.

The chill of the room announced the presence of night more than the darkness; the curtains had been drawn for the past week now. He had almost forgotten what the sun felt like on his skin, he hadn't left his room since the accident, the explosion…since his broken world left in a sleek black car towards an unknown destination.

And he never got to say goodbye.

But then, Danny didn't get to say goodbye to his friends or family when they left him, left him in a fiery explosion that devastated nearly all in their small city.

His parents had entered not long ago to bring him some food. They worried for him, and he could hear them outside his bedroom door discussing calling a doctor to look at him. But he didn't really care, didn't move, didn't look up or protest. What use was it? What use was anything?

The only reaction they had gotten out of him was a little under three days ago, when he had wept at the news of yet another tragedy. The millionaire Vlad Masters' home had been completely demolished, an explosion, they said, from his lab. Only one body was recovered, Daniel Fenton.

Dash had thrown his computer chair at Kwan, who had read the paper. Luckily the teen dodged, but he hadn't come to visit him again after he fled, leaving Dash to collapse on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest and weeping, not really knowing why.

He stopped eating after that. He hadn't even moved to use the restroom, his soiled pants a testament of his immobility. He didn't feel the complaints of his stomach anymore, and in a few more days he was sure he wouldn't feel anything at all, besides, even if he did, what difference would a little physical pain to the internal hurricane that ravaged his being.

He thought often about death, who would not? But instead of finding the resolve to live, clutching his every friend and family member as though they would slip through his fingers into the dark eternity, he felt himself slip further and further toward the edge of the abyss.

He could go downstairs and embrace his parents, call up Paulina and Kwan and apologize for his behavior, hold them as close as possible without it being awkward and soak up every moment to hold in his heart so he could recall their days of youth when he sat as an old man alone in his home.

But he knew it wouldn't last. He would for a few weeks cherish every moment when he would turn around and wave in answer to a friends call. Listen with relish as his parents pulled into his driveway and rush to meet them as though they were back from some long trip, and insist they do wonderful bonding events. But soon those moments would fade, and such occasions would become accustomed, lacking the love and enthusiasm he had put forth. And he would still picture himself as an old man, remembering such things with sadness, wondering why he didn't show the people he care for more affection.

And always he would imagine himself alone, a frail old man alone in his home.

He hadn't always done so. He had once imagined himself as a handsome old man with smoothed back silver hair and wrinkles that accentuated his strong features. He had envisioned himself with a loving family of grandchildren and a beautiful old woman, wrinkles and all, in a wheelchair by his side. Children laughing during Christmas, warm nights of making love even into their last days.

Now all he saw was an empty chair, and him speaking to the darkness in his mind. Sometimes, when he wanted to be hopeful, wanted to escape the pain, when he slept without closing his eyes, without really sleeping, he would dream of Danny. Of an aged Danny Fenton sitting in that chair talking and laughing with him, calling him a jerk when they remembered their youth and he would reply by calling him a looser. And they would glare at each other in mock annoyance and then laugh.

And it was inside one of these dreams, while he stared into the eternal chasm of death that had taken the shape of his closet, that the shadowy presence of evil entered his room.

He felt a chuckle rise in his chest, but it caught somewhere near his throat and morphed into a choked sob, because Danny was dead. Dead and decaying in the chair near his closet laughing at the memory of when Dash had shoved him in a locker and he couldn't get out before the house exploded and how it was a good thing Mr. lancer wasn't going to be in school Monday because he had forgotten to study for the CAT because his sample test had been burned in the Nasty Burger explosion and he didn't want to disappoint his parents.

And Dash didn't have the heart to tell the charred corpse sitting in the chair by his closet that his parent's had died and that he had already taken the CAT and had gotten a perfect score. Old men like them had such fragile wayward minds. He did, however, tell the old, decaying Danny Fenton that he was getting rotting ooze on his carpet again.

"Good evening Dashiel." The voice was rich. A deep haunting version of Danny's voice that it almost sent a shiver down Dash's spine if he wasn't so sure he had gone crazy. He didn't know why he had been talking to his tumbled over computer chair on the floor near his closet when Danny had been standing off in the corner, he couldn't even remember what he had been saying. Such a feeble old mind he had, did he not hear Danny arriving?

"Good evening Danny, I'm sorry I didn't hear you come in. I..I don't remember what I was doing. I guess I just was remembering something, you know from when we were kids. I do that often now." Dash smiled, looking past Danny at the curtained window, seeing only the bright sunshine and the young redheaded girl next door raking his leaves for money to take her baby brother to the movies. She looked oddly like Jazz.

Danny phantom raised an eyebrow and ran a gloved hand through his flaming hair. "I came to settle a little score you see. I figured if I'm going to destroy the world you may as well be the first." He looked around at the disheveled state of the room before stepping away from the wall he had been leaning on and approached the dazed looking Dash. "But you seem to be doing a good job of destroying yourself." He touched a finger to Dash's raw, bloody lip he had been nibbling unconsciously on for the past week. The dried blood covered his chin and even stained a few spots on his teddy bear nightshirt.

"I haven't really been the same since you left Danny, you know I hate when you leave. Rotting into a puddle of rusty goo and leaving stains on my chairs. An old man like me, I can't be cleaning up your messes. "He blinked, his eyes still not focusing and turned back to the closet. "That's what I was doing… I was talking to you. You should have told me I nodded off. I don't mean to fall asleep during our conversations."

"Have you gone crazy Dash? Or are you just high?" The menacing ghost hovered near the bed glaring at the blonde teen. "You know, I wouldn't put it past you. You popular guys probably got high and drunk all the time and all the teachers just let you get away with it. Ah well, not anymore. They'll all be dead soon too. Just like Lancer."

For the first time in hours Dash's eyes cleared and he stared in confusion at the toppled chair. "We never got high or drunk, not when I was there. I hate alcohol, and smoking is worse." He shook his head and turned to gaze at the specter. "What are you doing here ghost? Danny Phantom, why weren't you there to protect them? You're always there to save everyone, but you couldn't save them? And because of you Danny left…" Dash stared back to the chair. "And now he's dead."

Those words, that accusation, triggered something in Danny then, his own accusations, his own human doubt, voiced by his chosen victim. "You idiot." He hissed, grabbing Dash by the throat and slamming him back against the wall. "I am Danny! I'm that boy you picked on, tortured, and humiliated. Well now I'm back for revenge." He squeezed, feeling the strained windpipe beneath his fingers.

"I know." Dash choked out, his eyes showing nothing but that dazed, insane look he had when he had arrived.

Danny, taken aback, loosened his grasp.

"You told me yesterday Danny, remember. You old fool you were so clever then, a child protecting people. I bet you wouldn't have told me if I hadn't commented on your white hair. You just loved getting back at me didn't you?" Tears clouded his eyes. "I hate that you're dead, that you left and died. Every time you leave, you always leave. I can't even dream of you anymore." And his arms crossed over his legs, pulling them back to his chest in that empty embrace. He didn't want to see this anymore. He wanted to return to his painful reality, because not even his dreams gave him peace anymore.

"A dream, is that what you think this is Dash? Some little fantasy of yours?" The new Danny Phantom smirked, his tempter cooling and his calm, menacing presence returning in place of the raging anger. "What, may I ask, do you often dream of?"

"I don't want to dream." Dash tried to rest his chin on his knees but the grip on his neck wouldn't loosen. It didn't matter; it had become a comfortable collar, cool and unyielding like iron, but soft and oddly relaxing. "I don't want to **have** to dream. I want you back." The tears that had been threatening the corners of his eyes finally escaped their prison, singing in glee as they traveled down his cheek towards freedom.

Danny scowled at that. This was not how things were supposed to be going. His dark rimmed eyes narrowed at the tears that tripped on his glove. Dash was supposed to be cowering in fear, trembling in a corner like his own weak human self had done, and his human self had been ten times braver than Dashiel Baxter.

He suppressed a snarl. He would have to work on his patience, but he had time. He would be the most powerful ghost off all soon, but he had to have patience. Had to practice, had to plot, think things through. Like Vlad did, like good evil villains were supposed to do. Dash would be his practice, he would make it slow and painful, testing every power he knew he had and trying out a few knew ones. Soon, even this shell that Dash had become would be cringing away from him in fear.

"You want me back? Is school that boring now that you miss the one you tormented constantly? Well, I'm back." He rose from the bed bringing Dash with him, his neck still in a gloved grasp. "And I won't be leaving anytime soon."

Dash didn't respond, didn't struggle. It seamed that even the small moment of clarity he had showed moments before couldn't bring him back from whatever twisted world he now resided in. Danny felt a bitter disgust that the victory he thought he would relish the most would become a burdening task. What fun was it to torment when his victim had no ties to reality.

"Dash?" there was a knock at the door. "Dash sweetie there's a doctor here to see you." Dash's mother opened the door and allowed a thin column of light to illuminate the discarded chair, but when she turned to her son's bed, she screamed. Because written by Dash's own hand moments before he lost himself to his nightmarish dreams was a message to all, living and not.

Because before he had lost himself to the nightmarish world Dash had planned to kill himself, and now everyone thought he had.

Everyone but Danny Phantom, who attacked the city without mercy for ten long years before being utterly defeated by his past self. Even then, when his reality disappeared and was rewritten, Dash remained dead to the world, unaffected by the change. Floating in his home in the ghost zone, a home he had created with his mind. Sitting at his table, talking to his chair and imagining that he was an old man reminiscing about his past with his best and most cherished friend.

And in the back of his mind, a little corner of his brain where reality still dwelled, he was secretly glad that the evil Danny Phantom had destroyed him and everyone else, because now he could just wait here, talking to his chair and remembering the days when he was stupid and strong and hated everything that didn't wear a designer tag.

He had an important task, a task that would help shape the oncoming future.

But that would too, would be revealed in time.

All would be revealed in time.

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A little explanation. This, though indeed a separate tale of what happened to Dash Baxter during the Ultimate Enemy, because me and my dear friend Kola have been wondering that for quite some time, also plays an important role in the ongoing story Photo Opportunities. .

So if you enjoyed this fic, please go read it's sister. 

But if you would like to remain ignorant of any and all continuing events, including descriptions of what horrors Evil Danny inflicted upon Dash before he died and claimed territory in the ghost zone, then I hope you enjoyed this and thank you for reading.

-Rin


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